Infographic: How Google has changed what it means to do research

With almost 30 percent of the human population, or 2 billion people, using the internet; and 94 percent of US students equating research with using Google or other search engines, it comes as no surprise that 75 percent of students use Wikipedia and online encyclopedias for research.

Google dominates the battle for the search engine with 66.7 % of all searches that occur being via Google – and of students surveyed, 94% used Google or another search engine as an online reserach tool. They also used Wikipedia (75 %) and YouTube or otehr social media sites (52 % ).
Also the percentages of people who go online and immediately use a search engline is staggering, regardless of generation: Millennials, age 18-33: 92 %; Gen X (34-45): 87 %, Younger Boomers (45-55): 86 %; Older Boomers (56-64): 87 %, Silent Generation (65-73): 82 %, G.I. Generation (74 plus): 72 %, All online adults (18 plus): 87 %.

Check out this brief history of online research *source: gradschoolhub.com

1962: J.C.R. Licklider of MIT has “Galactic Network” concept, a globally
interconnected set of computers where everyone could access data from
any site.
1989: Demonstration of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee.
1990: Public release of the World Wide Web.
1990: First search tool for the web (Archie) was created.
1993: First web crawler (Wanderer) was created.
1993: First graphical browser (Mosaic).
1994: Netscape browser launched.
1994: Development of first popular search engines (Alta Vista, Lycos, Excite and Yahoo)
1995: Internet Explorer launched.
1995: First public video-conference took place.
1996: Instant messaging services launched.
1997: Google released
1997: First weblog (blog) is attributed to Jorn Barger’s Robot Wisdom Web site.
1997: SixDegrees.com is launched. Often seen as the first social networking site.
Paid placement ranking: Goto morphed into Overture and Yahoo. Ranking depended on how much you paid.
1998 +: Link based ranking pioneered by Google
> Blew away all search engines except Inktomi; meanwhile, Goto/Overture’s annual revenues were nearly $1 billion.
2000: 400 million people across the globe use the internet.
2001: First commercial launch of 3G (Third Generation) mobile phones.
2001: First Access Grid developed at the University of Manchester.
2003: Myspace launched.
2003: Yahoo acquires Overture (for paid placement) and Inktomi (search)
2004: Mozilla Firefox web browser released (the 2nd most popular current browser after Internet Explorer).
2004: Facebook launched.
2006: Twitter launched.
2007: iPhone launched.
2008: Google Chrome browser launched.
2010: iPad launched.
2011: Number of internet users estimated as 2 billion world wide.